Aleksandre Gogaladze

Aleksandre Gogaladze, PhD, is a Marine Conservation Scientist and ocean-literacy educator who has worked with the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the European Marine Science Educators Association (EMSEA), and WWF’s European Policy Office. His research has focused on the biodiversity of Black Sea coastal habitats and on evaluating how effective existing conservation measures really are.Through this work, he discovered a major barrier to protecting marine ecosystems: low awareness, not only among coastal communities, but also within conservation organizations, policymakers, and even academia. That’s when the importance of ocean education became impossible to ignore.The encouraging part? Curiosity. Children were eager to learn about the ocean — even if they lived far away from it.He created MiniMariners to bring the ocean closer — inspiring kids to explore coasts, beaches, and tidal habitats with curiosity and care. Today he works in the North Sea region, making it the natural starting point for MiniMariners: a coastline where children can meet seals, crabs, seaweed, and the moving world of tides right on their doorstep.